Diagnostic test strips are changing the way disease is disclosed

LIU

Courtesy McMaster University

A multi-disciplinary team of researchers has developed a new diagnostic test that can make it possible for patients to quickly determine if they are infected with an illness, using a simple paper test. Meng Liu is a McMaster University researcher who was one of the co-authors of a new research study about the subject.

TEST PAPER

Handout photo,The Hamilton Spectator

The new test, which could be commercialized quickly, the researchers say, can diagnose infections even before patients feel symptoms.

Imagine being able to diagnose everything from the common cold to cancer with tiny paper test strips.

A disease or ailment could be quickly and inexpensively disclosed — using a drop of blood, sweat or other bodily fluid — without the need for time consuming and costly lab analysis.

It's an innovation that is coming closer to commercialization with developments by a multidisciplinary team of researchers at McMaster University.

Yingfu Li, a professor of biochemistry and biomedical sciences at McMaster and one of the authors of the paper, says it's a "simple device that anyone can use" and he believes the development will help relieve congestion in lab testing facilities.

The researchers, who recently published a research paper on the subject in the German chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie, are part of a hot area of research that promises to profoundly change how disease is disclosed over the years ahead.

Testing strips are not a new idea.

They've been used in everything from disclosing the pH of soil, to glucose analysis in blood for diabetics, to determining whether a woman is pregnant.

But more recently, the innovation is being expanded to detect molecules of DNA and RNA, which can be used to disclose all kinds of ailments.

The German journal article said that strips have been developed to disclose a predisposition to develop breast cancer as well as detecting hepatitis in a patient.

In the same way that living beings are composed of DNA and RNA strands, so are various diseases that affect the body, says John Brennan, the director of the Biointerfaces Institute at McMaster.

The challenge is to commercialize self-contained paper tests that use reactive material to quickly and inexpensively detect their presence making lab tests unnecessary.

As scientists in research projects around the world try to move forward this area of research, there are critical stumbling blocks along the way. McMaster University researchers are taking on three of them:

•They are working on better ways to amplify the recognition of the DNA/RNA molecules directly on test strips so the tiniest amounts of the material can be detected.

•They have come up with an innovation using pullulan, the rapidly dissolving sugar found in Listerine breath strips, as a stabilizer that can greatly increase the shelf life of the strips.

•And unlike other research centres, McMaster has scalable printing technology to manufacture the test strips for market on a reasonably large scale once research is completed and government approvals are granted, something that could happen in the next two to three years.

Brennan says the McMaster researchers are taking a holistic approach because they are mindful of printing issues at the end of the development process.

"Just because you made it work manually in the laboratory, does not mean you can make it in a way that is manufacturable," he said.

He noted this was a key issue when glucose testing was first developed many years ago. Researchers, who had come up with functioning test strip in the lab, had to go back to square one because it was not something that could be readily mass produced.

For now, Brennan said the new DNA/RNA-based research is aiming itself for use in clinics where medical practitioners would administer the tests, rather than home testing. But that could happen later on with certain kinds of tests after Health Canada approvals are granted.